Sumo wrestling, deeply rooted in Japanese culture, is a unique sport where size and strength provide a distinct advantage. While it originated as part of Shinto religious ceremonies to welcome the new year, it has evolved into a competitive discipline attracting participants worldwide. Unlike other wrestling styles, sumo emphasizes forcing opponents to the floor or out of the ring. This article delves into the rigorous training regimen and specialized diet that support these athletes, known as rikishi, in achieving their goals.
The Essence of Sumo Wrestling
In sumo wrestling, the objective is simple: force your opponent to touch the floor with any part of their body besides their feet or make them step out of the ring. Closed fists are prohibited, and matches are officiated by a referee (gyoji) alongside ringside judges (shimpan). Becoming a rikishi demands unwavering hard work, determination, and discipline.
Newcomers typically join a stable where rank is highly respected. Lower-ranked wrestlers handle most chores, including cooking, marketing, cleaning, and ingredient preparation. Despite its Japanese origins, foreigners can participate, adhering to the same strict guidelines. A retirement ceremony marks the end of a rikishi's career, symbolized by cutting their traditional topknot.
The Sumo Wrestler's Training Regimen
Rikishi training begins early, often around 5 a.m. However, sumo wrestlers begin the day with no breakfast before grueling training sessions that can last a minimum of five hours. This intense training, performed on an empty stomach, serves multiple purposes. First, it prepares them for matches and helps them build an appetite for the massive meals to come. Second, it forces the body to burn energy reserves.
A typical sumo wrestling training regimen includes:
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- Shiko: This involves performing 20 repetitions of leg raises, holding each for 10 seconds, followed by a squat. This exercise builds lower body strength and stability.
- Mata-wari: Holding a full leg split with the head touching the ground for 10 seconds enhances flexibility.
- Suri-ashi: Sliding movements are practiced 20 times (5 yards each time), keeping the feet on the ground, knees bent, and elbows tucked in.
- Koshi-wari: Sumo squats are performed 20 times, holding each for 5 seconds. This involves a wide stance, slow bending of the knees, and squatting down before slowly pushing back up.
- Chiri-chozu: This opening ritual is repeated five times for 8 seconds each to improve balance in the squatting position and master the pre-bout ceremony.
The Cornerstone of a Sumo Wrestler's Diet: Chankonabe
Unlike other sports, sumo wrestlers do not typically rely on supplements to gain size. Instead, their diet is centered around a staple dish called chankonabe. This hearty, hot-pot stew varies by stable and cook, but generally includes proteins like fish, beef, chicken, pork, or tofu, combined with vegetables such as potatoes, mushrooms, radishes, and cabbage.
Preparing Chankonabe: A Step-by-Step Guide
While there is no single recipe for chankonabe, here's a basic preparation method:
- Prepare the Ingredients:
- 1/4 cup of daikon, chopped
- 2 medium carrots, chopped
- 1/4 cup of shiitake mushrooms, sliced
- 1 bunch of nira, chopped
- 1 bunch of green onion, chopped into 1-inch pieces
- A handful of cabbage, chopped
- A handful of bok choy, chopped
- 12 ounces of firm tofu, sliced
- Make the Meatballs:
- Combine meatball ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
- Roll into 1-inch balls using wet hands.
- Refrigerate until ready to use.
- Combine and Cook:
- Add chopped daikon and carrots to a pot.
- Add the pork meatballs.
- Add sliced shiitake mushrooms, chopped nira, green onions, cabbage, and bok choy.
- Lower the heat and add the sliced tofu (do not boil on high heat).
- Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Caloric Intake and Meal Timing
Many retired sumo wrestlers report consuming between 7,000 and 10,000 calories a day, primarily from chankonabe. This high-calorie intake is strategically timed. After their morning training, rikishi eat their first meal around noon, often consuming up to ten bowls of chankonabe. Following this massive meal, they take a four-hour nap, crucial for recovery and weight gain. They also eat many bowls of rice and noodles. This pattern of intense training followed by large meals and rest is designed to maximize weight gain and muscle development.
Competition Day Diet
On competition days, rikishi traditionally eat chankonabe made exclusively from chicken. This practice stems from the belief that chickens, which walk on two feet, symbolize the desired outcome of a sumo match: keeping both feet firmly planted on the ground.
Are Sumo Wrestlers Healthy?
The sumo wrestler's diet is quite straightforward. As long as you know how to make chankonabe you should be okay. Sumo wrestlers usually eat in groups. This is because community eating makes them eat more than they would eat if they were eating alone. Eating 7,000 to 10,000 calories daily might seem unhealthy. However, sumo wrestlers differ from individuals with obesity. Most people with obesity store the extra fat they have deep inside their abdomen. This extra fat wraps around their pancreas, liver, and other vital organs of the body. This fat is usually referred to as visceral fat. The visceral fat is more metabolically active than other types of fat and can increase inflammation and insulin resistance.
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Unlike individuals with typical obesity, sumo wrestlers often have minimal visceral fat, storing fat just beneath the skin. Some studies suggest that their rigorous training sessions prevent the buildup of visceral fat, maintaining normal triglyceride levels and low cholesterol. Exercise increases a hormone called adiponectin. However, it’s important to note that these advantages diminish upon retirement.
The Importance of Avoiding Unhealthy Foods
Sumo wrestlers are some of the most healthy athletes even though they don’t look like it. This is because they don’t eat processed food, junk food, sweetened foods and so on. Their hard and tiring workout sessions also play a role in ensuring they are healthy.
Debunking Myths: Calorie Intake and Modern Dietary Adjustments
The stereotype of sumo wrestlers consuming 20,000 calories daily is an exaggeration. The idea that sumo wrestlers out-eat strongman competitors and endurance athletes by two or three times doesn’t add up. While their calorie intake is high, typically ranging from 5,000 to 8,000 calories, and sometimes reaching 10,000, it's not as extreme as often portrayed.
The Evolution of the Sumo Diet
For centuries, sumo wrestlers have relied on simple, nutrient-dense meals to build strength and endurance. The goal was straightforward: consume enough calories to maintain size and strength, with less emphasis on nutrient balance. While sumo wrestlers still eat large, calorie-dense meals, their diet today is more structured and diverse than ever. Over time, the sumo world has become more health-conscious, leading to declining alcohol consumption. Also, recently, several sumo stables (beya) have set up YouTube channels. The videos give great insight into daily sumo stable life, training sessions, and a lot of food-related content.
The retired rikishi diet
After retiring from his sport, Sumo Dan saw no need to be pushing the scales at that weight anymore. Thus, he dropped down to his current walking weight of around 285 pounds. Sumo Dan followed a diet to maintain that size while he was active in his sport, and it would make some competitive eaters think twice before taking the challenge on. He also trained multiple times a day, once with weights and another session for mobility and sport-specific training. Aside from what he eats, he also drank around 3 gallons of water throughout the day, and often added about 1 gallon of sparkling water, which he consumed with meals and snacks.
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The Role of Intermittent Fasting
The best example we have of real-world lifestyle Intermittent Fasting is Sumo Wrestlers and their diet-strategy. They practice the exact diet-strategy outlined by the most popular form of IF. And they do so, precisely because it helps them gain the fat weight they seek; and gain it in the quickest amount of time. As I said this diet-strategy of the 4 points above helps them achieve higher bodyfat in the least amount of time. (Is that your goal?) They skip breakfast and eat only twice per day not to burn fat; but to store it more efficiently. Furthermore they eat this way as a means to WILDLY INCREASE HUNGER and appetite so they can eat more and deliberately keep metabolism slower as well. They follow this diet-strategy in order to be able to stomach even more food at a sitting. The Sumo Wrestler works out for about 3-4 hours per day which is more than most of you do, so they burn a lot of energy; a lot more than you do. Eating like this, 2 massive meals instead of smaller more frequent feedings throws hunger hormones and gut to brain/brain to gut biochemistry completely out of whack and more toward fat storage than usage!